Gunk Baby

by Jamie Marina Lau

A black comedy workplace thriller set in a sprawling indoor shopping mall about a cabal of low-wage workers who plot violent acts of “resistance” against their managers.

In the suburb of Par Mars stand a pair of identical shopping centers, each with the same harsh, fluorescent lights, climate-controlled environment, and monotonous encounters between employees and shoppers.

Reviving an ancient Chinese ritual passed down by her mother, twenty-four-year-old Leen has opened an ear-cleaning and massage studio in the Topic Heights Shopping Center. But the social fabric of Par Mars is coming loose, and a quiet unrest is growing among the mall’s low-wage workers as store managers begin to fall victim to increasingly brutal and spontaneous attacks. When Leen befriends Jean Paul, a pharmacist enmeshed in a cryptic online community, she finds herself embroiled in a troubling plot to disrupt the routines of the town’s banal consumer culture.

With fierce intellect, sharp wit, and original prose, Jamie Marina Lau interprets and vividly portrays the everyday violence and toil of contemporary working life. Encapsulating millennial ennui and middle-class boredom, Gunk Baby is an inventive and deliberate novel from a fresh, new, exciting voice.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Australia, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Thriller, Adult

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

https://www.instagram.com/babyzzks/

Reviews

[Emily Coffee and Commentary · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0rWuzPL2...

A slow building thriller on consumerism and the dangers of banality and resentment. With a relatable voice against the backdrop of the universally recognizable and versatile shopping center, this novel discusses the hugely capitalist influence on modern culture; how we are so pressured to buy endless things, services, experiences, how we are judged by our ability to be envied, copied, how so much of our worth is based on the wages we make; how otherness is wielded as a weapon, and our need to be seen can reach a violent boiling point. Gunk Baby is also a walk along the line between innovation and destruction, ambition and exploitation, thought and reality. A freshly angry take on the contemporary worker, influencer, entrepreneur, and the ways in which we struggle to get by, how we decide what truly want in a world where so many others would rather decide for us.

[Oanh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This felt to me like the supposedly biting commentary was either missing or too subtle for me to pick up on it. Anyway, I persisted and finished, and am still mostly left with *shrug*. Sort of like setting off to go shopping and then remembering that I really don't like shopping, and it leaves me feeling unfulfilled and disatisfied and disaffected, and maybe this was the intent?

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gunk Baby is an inventive, compelling and provocative novel rich in social commentary and the innate beauty of several different cultures. Throughout a childhood spent moving between different countries, one thing was constant for Leen. The local shopping centre. Within those complexes, the familiar landscape of logos, the bright lights, the climate-controlled environment and the interactions between workers and customers never changed. It all looked shiny, new and tidy - on the surface. So, when it feels like the same day for far too long, Leen decides to open a healing studio - ear-cleaning, massage and cupping - for her, the Par Mars Topic Heights shopping complex is the perfect location to build a business.

A place where you can smell summer even if it happens to be winter. Here, Leen thinks she is making connections. Just like in the ancient Chinese art of ear-cleaning taught to her by her mother, she thinks what you can't see, you trust someone else to be able to. But what if you trust the wrong person? And what if that person is not looking to heal but to destroy? With a fierce intellect and masterful storytelling, Jamie Marina Lau brings to life a world that is devastatingly close to our own.

A world where consumerism drives us to buy things we don't need, where otherness can be used to manipulate, where a person's worth is measured by the role they play or the way they look and where protective services isn't about protecting others from violence but viciously punishing those who step outside the lines. This is my type of novel; abundant with razor-sharp critique and dissection of capitalism, modernity, materialism and hedonism and strewn with pin eye perceptions of the world that surrounds us, this is a sinister and disturbing consumerist horror story of exciting, confronting and unusual proportions. Highly recommended.

[Siobhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gunk Baby is a book about consumerism, capitalism, and class, as an ear-cleaning shop is opened in a shopping centre being taken over by a minimalist chain. Leen is twenty-four and just opening an ear-cleaning and massage shop in a shopping centre in Par Mars, a suburban land of housing estates. At the same time she meets Jean Paul, a disaffected guy working in a pharmacy who is obsessed with an online forum, and finds herself drawn into a community of people fighting back against consumerism and the managers in the shopping centres who they see as controlling it.

The vibe of Gunk Baby is if Fight Club was focused on the IKEA/Project Mayhem stuff and was also about a Chinese woman using her mother's advice that Westerners love healing rituals. As with other books about disaffection and what is brewing underneath, not a huge amount happens for a lot of the book, other than Leen occasionally having clients, being involved with the anti-capitalist community, and getting closer to a guy who works in the chain minimalist shop that is taking over. However, it still has a lot of biting commentary running underneath, all cleverly brought together with the aesthetic of shopping centres, drugs, and whether to embrace or reject conformity.

You can almost hear strains of muzak and see the inside of a shopping centre at all times as you read this novel—that's how well the atmosphere is created, a kind of hazy slightly unreal world whether or not the characters are actually inside one. It has a lot to say about orientalism and capitalism, and comes together in a satisfying way that you foresee, but that feels like the point. Gunk Baby is the sort of book that'll be recommended if you like various 'cult classics', but it also feels fresh and clever.

[Letitia | Bookshelfbyla · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to DNF this 10 times. This put me in a reading slump so I’m bitter. I couldn’t for the life of me connect to any of the characters or truly care about the story — it had potential but now I’m just confused as to what I just read.

[Isabelle D · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5, but rounding down for disappointment. I really wanted to like this book. I was drawn in by the synopsis on the back, but ultimately let down by what the book held within.

The major issue I had with Gunk Baby was the narration style of protagonist, Leen. She was in a perpetual state of boredom. Sentences were delivered matter-of-fact, stripped from emotion. That made it really hard to connect with the story, and certainly difficult to connect with Leen as a character.

Example from the first page I randomly opened to:

“After a moment of standing in my studio, I decide to go to the food court for a break, walking the other way around, distracting myself with the mannequins in the shopfronts. I go to the Asian grocers and get some snacks in a plastic bag. When I arrive at the food court, I scratch my arm for a few minutes and go to buy a pea-and-ham sandwich.”

See? Bland, choppy, blah. I guess you could say this creates a vibe of boring banality, which is a shopping mall. So I get that it conveys a mood, but this this whole time?! Doesn't make for a pleasant read.

This also meant that the book fell short on its potential for description. I end the book without a vivid image of the Topic Heights shopping mall (huge missed opportunity), or even the characters (I know that Jean Paul has braces and Leen shaved her head half-way through, but that's all).

There were some plots I did enjoy — how friends grow apart, how a quirky leader can become radicalized, how materialism permeates even minimalist ethos (it’s giving Ikea). But it felt like all of these plot were back-burners, getting a flash of attention every once in while.

The pace felt like this: ^——^—^———————^——. Some interesting blips in the blah-ness.

Some may say the ending brought it all together with satisfaction. But I read it and I was like yep. That’s exactly where this was going. Okay lesson learned: consumerism is a jail. That’s not news.

It’s like I had taken on the blasé demeanor of Leen myself and just watched it all happen without reaction. But I don't like that feeling.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book of a generation. Every generation has a book - Catcher in the Rye, Portnoy's Complaint, The Fight Club, American Pyscho, White Teeth, Normal People and now comes Gunk Baby. A brilliant new voice depicting , dissecting, rebelling against the ennui of capitalist greed and corporatization/ Amazonization of modern life. With humor, sophistication and non-stop genius wordplay, Gunk Baby is like nothing else you will read this or next year or ever!

[janie]

i'm not sure if i really vibed with the pacing and actual storytelling of _gunk baby_. everything felt really loose and fragmented until it didn't. and when it didn't, it was really fucking good. that ending might just excuse whatever quirks and faults i found prior to it. overall, though, i really enjoyed this little world and all its inhabitants, found the latter so horrifyingly & even uncannily realistic. thought the writing was strange and hilarious, too. makes me wonder if i can train myself to think like leen lol

[jq · Rating 5 out of 5]

bonkers in the best way. this is gonna stay with me for a while

[Amy Biggart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe this is better than two stars, but i just couldn’t bring myself to care much

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

The main character was so unbelievably detached from the events of the novel. It seemed like she was inserted into the story for the express purpose of being the lens to view the action. Rather than narrating from the third person, which would have felt more logical, she attends meetings that she, like the reader, knows will only end with one outcome. And that's it and it's obvious yet completely underwritten. The end of the novel tacks on a useless vague epilogue that doesn't add anything or answer anything or achieve anything.

I had high hopes and honestly had to force myself to keep reading for the sake of getting it out of my To Be Read pile and out of my house. I don't even want to give it to a friend to receive - this is going straight to the donation bin. So much potential, ruined by a waffling story and an inauthentic main character.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I love it when you wear the beige K.A.G. top. You look really pretty in it."

What a baffling book! A truly fascinating look at consumerism, capitalism, individualism and much more. It was written in almost a detached way, the main character Leen really not seeming to be much of a person at all? I think that's what was most frustrating about this. The characters don't really do anything to change their lives, they just get sucked into this cult-like mentality and never truly explain why. I think there is more to it than that, there's definitely a lot of detail in this book. But I am still so intrigued by this book and this author. I love the way it was written and I love stories like this. Interested to read more from Jamie Marina Lau.

[Vivian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long and pointless. I skimmed quite a lot of this book - especially the ridiculously long passages describing bits of furniture and Leen’s pseudo psychology musings. Added to this, Leen’s disdain of the violence around her and lack of care for her partner made her thoroughly unlikeable. I just didn’t care what happened to her. This book tries so hard to be clever but is ultimately just boring.

[Kiara · Rating 2 out of 5]

A common critique of some of my favourite novels (A Little Life, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow) is that they attempt to tackle too many topics at once. That is to say, I am a lover of complex books that deal with a variety of issues, even if they’re inconsequential to the narrative. They can still successfully flesh out the story and add so much character. That’s why I saw so much potential in Gunk Baby to explore so many interesting topics (race, orientalism, workplace sexual harassment, capitalism, consumption, marketing, anti-capitalist resistance, cults, responsibility and accountability, power, etc.). I was ultimately disappointed by the lack of nuance with which these subjects were discussed. Countless sentences go something like, “I think about [insert vague social concept],” without offering any real reflection.

A big issue here is the protagonist and narrator, Leen. It feels like she always keeps the reader at arm’s length. In many ways, she’s merely an observer. She never really lets us in on how she feels, nor does she really react to or express her opinions on the (sometimes batshit crazy) things other characters are doing or saying. I don’t need female protagonists to be strong in the girlboss way (although, arguably, Leen is a girlboss). I just need them to be complex. Her passivity and lack of agency became more frustrating the further I go into the book, especially because it felt like she was simply being pushed around by the two main male supporting characters without having any opinion about it.

And can I just talk about them for a second? Jean Paul is fucking unbearable, I think that’s kind of the point. I understand he’s meant to be this persuasive, charismatic leader, but I didn’t buy it. Regardless, I could not stand the way no character meaningfully stood up to him or critiqued him. It would have made sense if people had been held back by fear of him or his power, but that was not the case. Everyone’s view of Jean Paul just felt flavourless. Talented authors can create the most insufferable characters while still keeping me glued to the page. Unfortunately, with this book, I dreaded every scene he was in and just wanted to get through them as quickly as possible.

That said, I want to make it clear that I didn’t dislike my reading experience. I actually found the middle section of Gunk Baby immersive and engaging. I was hopeful and anxious for the success of Leen’s business, excited by her new friendship with Farah, charmed by her first encounter with Luis, and stressed about her precarious situation with Vic and Doms. I think any book over 300 pages, unless it fails miserably at its job, manages to immerse me in its world fairly well, and this was no exception. I enjoyed my trip into Par Mars and the Topic Heights shopping complex with its many stores and employees.

However, the writing felt a bit disjointed, and the last 100 pages unfortunately became a bit of a drag. Especially towards the end, the book becomes very satirical, borderline dystopian. But it never fully commits to either genre. And while I don’t think you have to be too on-the-nose to write meaningful critique, Gunk Baby doesn’t succeed at borrowing from these well-established forms.

My core issue with Gunk Baby is that (much like its protagonist) it is not assertive in its message. I do not know what kind of commentary this book is trying to make on capitalism or anti-capitalist resistance. Maybe I’m asking for too many instructions from the novel, maybe it demands the reader to figure that out for themselves. But a simple collection of vague thoughts, conversations and ideas ultimately left me longing for more.

2.5 stars

P.S. Shout-out to Jamie Marina Lau for this section in her acknowledgements: “I would also like to acknowledge that the country in which this book was written, and which the fictional world in it resembles, is stolen land.” She goes on to pay her respects to the Aboriginal Nations and dedicates the book to authors of colour.

[Calzean · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very strangely told tale but one told inventively and with plenty of dark humour.
Leen, a young Asian woman, opens up a Chinese massage and ear wax cleaning salon in a shopping mall. The mall is dominated by a Chinese Department store which slowly is devouring the neighbouring shops and is growing its range of products.
Leen's business at first struggles and she joins a kind of cult which is against consumerism and all those who profit from it. The leader of the cult starts playing pranks on various business managers and these pranks slowly get more violent.
I'm not sure whether this book is a dud or just brilliant. It certainly is different.

[Eileen]

oh man what an absolutely bonkers ending. this was really good, i think tighter conceptually / narratively than her first book, though kind of poorly edited? like could’ve done w just another round of copy edits, even. but this seems like the publisher’s fault, and the writing itself has got so much charm and wit and general weirdness, and also ofc loved the fact that main character is a 24-yr old chinese person w a shaved head named leen (me soon!)

[Mackenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda unsure about this one. Really interesting and shocking, but I think juggling all of the different storylines got confusing and made it hard for me to buy into the progression of each one individually

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great cover art! The synopsis makes it sound like it would be funny, like Horrorstör, but it's just about a lady who cleans ears in a strip mall.

[Jess Farquhar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confused

[Amani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gunk Baby reads like a mildly bizarre dream set in a shopping mall on a regular weekday. You know—mostly desolate, shopping mall music droning incessantly, empty stores with idle workers. I think this quote does a good job of conveying the tone and distinctly weird, dream-like ambiance of Gunk Baby:

When I touch the hot steering wheel it stings a long paper cut across my hand. I'm not sure when it got there. The windows are down. There's a red streak across the sky and a dead animal on the road, which I swerve around smoothly. It looks like a bear, a chunky little thing. The mega gas station is lit up with white lights, flickering like a mirage. I remember to breathe in my nose and out my mouth.

The narration by Leen, our twenty-something years old main character, is detached, drifting wherever events carry her. It definitely took considerable effort for me to finish the book, what with the style of narration, but Lau's writing also has a lot of charm that kept me reading. Overall it's a weird, colourful, inventive story, and weeks later, I'm still unable to really wrap my head around it. Regardless, Gunk Baby definitely has personality and a lot to say.

[Amanda Stecco · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m still not 100% sure what I read, but I’ll definitely be thinking about it for a while. As I made my way through the book I kept wondering what the story or plot was. Things often felt extremely fragmented, and when it came to the characters, I found it really hard to imagine people behaving in these ways with no one checking them. They seemed like holograms at times.

The ending was somewhat worth all the confusion leading up to it though. It was perfect and smacked you in the face with the point.

[Kallie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted a little more from this, the description oversells it I think. This almost feels like it was written by an ear cleaner trying to sell people on their business. The anti-capitalist crew was interesting but didn't show up much

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many thoughts! No traditional narrative structure, no ‘plot’, no ‘setting’, meandering and meditative pacing. Really effective and rousing commentary on consumerism, labour, and the search for meaning. Perhaps one of the weirdest but coolest books I’ve ever read. This one will stay with me.

[Sarah]

DNF @ 30%

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I find I sometimes crave to be inconsequential physically, but simultaneously appreciated in energy. It is the Buddhist belief, anatman, or anattā, which speaks about the ‘non-self’. It suggests that the more the perception of self is rooted in the material, ‘solid’ objects – the name, the body, the interaction, the memory – the more we are entrapped in the relaying of impermanence. The more we become no-thing, the more we are able to experience life firsthand, unbiasedly. We stop relying on our exteriors to divulge to us, how we should treat ourselves."

There are lots of great lines in Gunk Baby, which also layers critiques of consumerism, alienation, wellness culture, working life and capitalism over a surrealist narrative set in a highly recognisable outer suburb and shopping mall. These characters, be they mall managers, rebelling workers, urban guerillas, drug dealers, wellness gurus or our slightly disconnected protagonist, all more or less fail to escape the central alienation of modern capitalism. Characters embrace or retaliate against KAG, a kind of Chinese Ikea, which promises minimalism while filling your house with ever exapanding goods, but on both paths they fail to meaningful connect with each other.
But while this is clever, it never really deeply engaged me: certainly not in the way Lau's debut Pink Mountain on Locust Island did. Whereas Pink Mountain fizzed with so much energy it was exhausting, Gunk Baby, imitating our protagonist, frequently lags so much it threatens tedium. The large number of interwoven plots/threads each moves slowly, adding to the sense of gradual entrapment. It's atmospheric, for sure, but not always fun to read.

[Lily Z · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cool premise that could’ve been very good but literally nothing happened in this book……. nothing. The story arc was a straight line. The only remotely exciting thing happened in the last few pages of the entire book but there was barely any explanation leading up to it or following it, the book just ended. I think the message was too subtle (or I’m stupid) and it didn’t go far enough to be effective satire #tome. The last sentence hit hard and really summed up what the book was trying to say but there wasn’t a lot leading up to that point to make the entire thing……. good.

[Sodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gunk Baby immerses you in a glowing stream of western imperliast information, that's so familiar that it's like recognising your own family. It's like the book calls from within a dissasociated body that keeps trying to draw breath over the waves of suburban neon consumerism. It feels like living as a person in your 20s and watching the world burn slow and steady, stinking of rubbish and sweat and cleaning products.

[Hily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a lot to say about this one, but keep in mind I feel a lil confused- like I need a spark notes version to grasp all the nuances and smarty pants allegories that I missed. Was our main character THAT much of a villain? I mean, yeah, but specifically to Farrah?? I just don’t know man. I did mark some quotes I keep going back to & eventually I’ll scribble them down in my diary. Overall it was a slight challenge for me, being written in the style it was, and concerning topics I am unfamiliar with, but this was a challenge I am proud of myself for tackling.

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I couldn't stop thinking about all the other great books I had waiting for me when I tried to gut my way through this one. I see it as a subtle sign of maturity that I am finally able to walk away. I used to gut through every book I read!

[nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book but not sure about the ending